John Mace, yes, I linked to that thread in my OP. That thread was about the legal aspects of such a theoretical possibility. Only today I found out that Women on Waves offered this exact possibility, so, IMHO, I wanted to share that fact and debate if the existence of that Women on Waves offer could mean the fight could be fought differently.
Modesty, my point is that there are only so many hours and airtime a movement can spend. Time spent on the same pro-choice arguments will probably yield the same results it has yielded over the past few years, which is to say, increasingly little returns. Now, does that mean that when it comes to the pro-choice battle, we need to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place? Or does that mean we could approach the problem from a different angle, where the same amount of activist hours might yield more results for women’s rights, all of womens’ rights?
Jane Elliot, Snarky, naita, I’m guessing that the parts of the US without internet also don’t have Planned Parenthood clinics, or good education or job opportunities, for either women or men. And it would be wonderful if that changed. But for that to change, good Dems need to get more votes. And they don’t get that if they keep banging the tribal drum. I’m not saying to stop the effort, I’m saying smarten up the effort.
Ritter Sport, women on waves offers good, reliable medication. If Planned Parenthood would offer the same, or if PP would link to WoW, there is no market for bad pills. There is no reliable online shop for viagra and such; and that is because there are no idealistic companies offering that, because they can’t compete with the legal offer. That is different in this case.
Increasingly, the Republicans have a two pronged clever strategy.
From time to time, the designated Rep-of-the-day condemns pro-choice. This forces soem Dem to say they’re pro-choice, once more cementing in the public mind that the Dems are the pro-abortion party. Cost to the Republican: zero. Cost to the Dem: yielding the floor to the Rep. Instead, Dems should be on the offense and call out the Rep for defunding public child services. And if the Rep says: abortion is bad, then Dems can say, as Obama did, that yes, abortion IS sad, and should be safe, available, and rare, so why don’t we fund some evidence based sex ed so abortions can be rarer?
Why do the Dems let the Reps control this story?
All the while, the Reps have clever, administrative strategies for silently wrecking Planned Parenthood. I linked to one, int eh Rolling Stone article. The Dems usually don’t have a good answer to this. They march, and write longreads for their own bubble, instead. And they certainly don’t employ the same strategy on the offense. What if the Dems came up with a clever, but boring sounding regulation that suddenly made it a finable offense to underpay workers in a mostly female field?
The Democratic strategy regarding abortion policy should be to break the link between pro-choice and pro-abortion. Many people who vote Democratic, myself included, are pro-choice and anti-abortion. I think abortion is often a poor choice, but even worse is the government interfering in my life. The abortion issue needs to be reframed as small government vs socialized religion. Drive a wedge between the business conservatives and the theocrats in the Republican Party.
Nope. Instead, we should be expanding access to free abortions as much as possible. This is the only thing that would ever solve systemic poverty.
Alongside free abortions, we’d also need:
-A one-child-per mother law. If women do not want to have a child, they could be allowed to sell their privilege to a woman who wants more than one kid.
-Have the government pay people to undergo vasectomies and hysterectomies if they desire to.
-Make birth control pills and morning-after pills OTC in stores and available in all schools for free.
Then sit back and watch millions of people be lifted out of poverty within a couple of generations. The ecological benefits of a shrinking population would just be a bonus.
Is all this politically feasible? No, but going in the other direction is just kicking a problem down the road for other generations to solve, as has been typical in the US forever. Throwing money at welfare programs like the Left wants doesn’t fix poverty, and neither does the Right’s decree to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Eventually, catastrophic climate change will also make it impossible to even feed the swelling population of human beings on this planet, and governments will turn to genocide to keep numbers down, as they tend to do. We could be proactive now, or we could wait until those fresh horrors start occurring.
We are talking about the right to body autonomy. You think women should shut up about this fundamental right?
I wonder if there were countless laws enacted by mostly women that governed what men could do with their bodies if men would go along with “Just be quiet about how your rights are stomped on - we have more important issues. We’ll get to your body autonomy later.”
Your whole OP is sexist. Someone up thread said you should feel bad. They’re right.
This thread only makes sense in a world where the case which will completely unsettle abortion law in this country isn’t already on file and will be ready to be handed down next June.
And you do realize that the Democratic party has been putting this issue on the back burner forever? My party has continually thrown women under the bus on this issue. When compromise has to be made, abortion rights are one of the things that get “compromised” so the other side can get some kind of “win”. Abortion rights and the rights of people of color continually get “negotiated” away.
I’m sick of this tactic and I think women are sick of it in general. Women and people of color are the base of the Democratic party. The party needs to start acting like this fact matters.
No, women don’t need to shut up, they need to keep yelling at the top of their lungs about this.
I know *my *body autonomy may not be important to you, but no, just no. Telling the people who win you elections to be quiet about the single issue which pretty much makes them slaves to birthing is infuriating.
So don’t bring up abortion until you have to power to improve access to abortion? You know who else like that strategy? Politicians who want to be elected as democrats, but are against improving access to abortion.
That’s a group that has been dwindling, but that would grow again if the issue was “left alone”. And what happens then? A bi-partisan stumbling block to improving access to abortion.
She could always buy the privilege from someone else if she changes her mind after selling hers.
We’ve already got pockets of dystopia all over the world. Go to the Baltimore ghettos and Syria if you want to see real dystopia. Wait a few decades until cites in the Middle East & Asia become uninhabitable thanks to climate change and Western countries are confronted with caravans of regugees from all corners. The future of the human race is either mass genocide, or clumsy and ultimately futile redistribution of wealth, or a brutally rational technocracy that plans for the future. I choose the latter.
Kimstu, I’m not saying the Dems should become anti-choice. I’m saying they should stop making it their battle cry. Being vocal about something is quite different from being effective about it. The reps are vocal about small government and lower taxes, but they are efficient about a war on the poor to benefit wealthy lobbyists.
Modesty Blaise, that would be infuriating indeed, so I’m glad that is not what I am doing. And I’m a pro choice woman, by the way.
I’m also trying to learn political strategy, and finding it is more complicated then being outraged. A more interesting question is how to use outrage, on either side, for good ends.
But your unsupported assumption is that abortion and reproductive health services are currently available to everyone. That’s not true today, and it’s getting worse for the poor in many states. It has the potential to get worse for people everywhere in the US. What you propose has the effect of allowing significant erosion of existing rights, even though it’s not your intent.
Oh, yeah, everyone should just go to Planned Parenthood and everything will be ok. Unless you live in Wyoming, or North Dakota, where there are no PPs. In my own state, Maine, there are 4. None of them north of the Augusta, the state Capital. I live in central Maine, so it’s only an hour or so to the closest PP. If you happen to live in someplace like Fort Kent, it’s only a 5-hour drive, one way.
Access to abortion and contraceptives is one of the most critical issues for women, as controlling fertility is a critical part of economic independence and equality.
There aren’t many other issues as fundemental for the Democratic Party to rally behind, if the Democrats really are the party of the working class. The idea that it’s even close to being settled and in place is so wrong as to be laughable.
You said the problem was already solved, and I gave examples of what else needs to be done.
You say Democrats should focus on other issues, but abortion and family planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Nothing else lifts people out of poverty like not having kids you can’t afford. China created a middle class seemingy out of thin air thanks to their one-child-per-family law. There is also research that shows that since Roe v Wade, the nation’s crime rate has even dropped thanks to less unwanted humans being born into poverty & instability.
If being pro-abortion loses votes, well then the Overton window needs to be moved to the left in this case. Few things annoy me more than when someone describes themselves as anti-abortion but pro-choice. This cedes the moral high ground to pro-lifers and continues the myth that abortion is somehow immoral. It’s not- it’s amoral, like extracting wisdom teeth or removing a tumor. All this soft support has led to is weakening abortion rights all over the country.